Fall TV: 5 CaN't-Miss New Shows

Pumpkin spice is in the air, and that means the arrival of the latest crop of new television shows is right behind this seasonal treat.  While this year’s harvest will yield a disappointingly high amount of time travel (NBC’s Timeless, The CW’s Frequency and ABC’s mid-season Time After Time) and remakes (Fox’s Lethal Weapon, The Exorcist and CBS’s MacGuyver), don’t be discouraged.  Queen Sugar’s early debut has already raised the bar to stratospheric levels.  

There’s still a bushel of delicious new shows that could be your next favorite, contain the next ship-worthy OTP or take pleasure in destroying your feels in new and exciting ways. 
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Here are the 5 Can’t-Miss New Shows of the season…

FOX's Pitch
Starring: Kylie Bunbury, Mark-Paul Gosselar
Premiere Date: Sept. 22 at 9/8c
 
In 2014, Mo’Ne Davis made headlines and history by becoming the first girl to pitch a shutout in the Little League World Serious (and the first black girl to compete in the tournament ever). Though her team didn’t win, Davis changed the conversation about women joining the ranks of Major League Baseball to when not if.

Pitch dramatizes that glass-shattering moment in sport’s history by following the fictional Ginny Baker’s ascent to MLB. Starring Kylie Bunbury (Twisted) and a barely recognizable Mark-Paul Gosselaar (Franklin & Bash), Pitch's trailer is a home run, boasting both wonderfully uplifting girlpower and a flawless cast.  I'm already so invested that I have an insane fear that Michael Beach's tenacious coach-dad won't survive to see episode two.

With feels so infectious, Pitch could quickly become the best sports TV show since Friday Night Lights.  

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HBO's Insecure 
Starring: Issa Rae, Yvonne Orji
Premiere Date: Oct. 9 at 10:30/9:30c
 
Issa Rae, the author of The Misadventures of an Awkward Black Girl and a web series of the same name is taking her introverted ways to HBO.  Insecure just might be the comedy black women need and deserve. From career to fashion—Issa’s aversion to heels and body-con dresses is fabulous—to dating, Rae’s comedy presents a unique and spot-on take as life as a single black woman.  Hopefully Insecure will find its audience on HBO, and the premium cable network can secure more inclusive programming.   

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NBC's This Is Us
Starring: Sterling K. Brown, Milo Ventimiglia, Mandy Moore, Justin Hartley
Premiere Date: Sept. 22 at 10/9c

You had me at Milo Ventimiglia’s booty. 

NBC’s new drama is the one of the most-anticipated new show of the season. Created by the writer and director of Crazy, Stupid Love, This Is Us follows the lives of three vastly different people born on the same day.  Emmy-nominee Sterling K. Brown plays a successful man tracking down the father who abandoned him as an infant. The Young And The Restless alum Justin Hartley is an in-demand actor on the verge of a breakdown.  And Mandy Moore and Ventimiglia are a couple madly in love and expecting triplets.

Though the weight loss storyline feels stereoptyical, the trailer boasts drama so poignant, you’ll not only need to stock up on tissues and more than likely re-hydrate after the show.  It also hints at a mind-blowing twist I may have inadvertently figured out. 

For the sake of the struggling NBC and my masochistic feels, I pray to the small screen gods Us fills the heart-shaped hole Parenthood left in the television landscape when it ended its run.  Otherwise, its timeslot will be probably be filled with yet another Chicago-themed spin-off, Chicago: Meter Maids.

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Netflix's Luke Cage
Starring: Mike Colter, Mahershala Ali, Simone Missick
Premiere Date: Sept. 30

Not all heroes wear capes.  In the trailer above, Luke Cage (Mike Colter) dons a hoodie to fight crime, and the symbolism is as poignant as it is pointed.  Luke Cage is the comic-book catharsis a heartbroken Black America needs—a bulletproof, hero who embraces his blackness and channels his rage into something life-saving.  This much-anticipated Marvel series also stars the hardworking and endlessly talented Mahershala Ali (Moonlight, Hidden Figures, House Of Cards) in a rare turn as a swagged out and volatile villain that I might root for more than I should.  

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USA's Falling Water
Premiere Date: Oct. 13 at 10/9c
Starring: David Aja, Lizzie Brochere, Will Yun Lee

What do you get when you take one-part Inception and blend it with one-part Sense8?  A television show called Falling Water that’s three-parts badass.  USA’s ambitious and trippy new drama centers on three strangers who somehow appear in each other’s dreams.  They eventually learn that they are all searching for something—a missing son, girlfriend and an ill parent—and the clues to recovering them are within their collective dreams.  The series seems to soon turn nightmarishly scary as they uncover the true power of dreams.  

Falling Water’s trailer is a mind-boggling stunner of imagery and imagination that doesn’t match the big-budget and iconic visuals of Inception but comes pretty close.  With a diverse cast and a stockpile of weird, Water could be one of the shows you thirst for the most this season.